Sunday, 4 July 2010

Random Creepy Scene #846: Friday the 13th - Part VII: The New Blood

The Friday the 13th franchise isn't exactly renowned for its subtlety. It is a series of movies essentially repeating a very familiar pattern: teens in secluded backwoods by Crystal Lake fall victim to hulking and very repressed killing machine Jason Voorhees. After they’ve indulged in copious amounts of booze, drugs and premarital sex, naturally. It’s generally held that the higher the number of the sequel, the lesser the quality of the film. This has never stopped me from enjoying each instalment though. With a nice Sauvignon, natch.

In part seven of the series the filmmakers actually attempted to take the franchise in a slightly new direction – as well as all the usual stupid teens wandering around in the dark woods investigating strange noises and getting murderlised by Jason, a pretty girl with latent telekinetic powers is also thrown into the mix. It’s essentially Jason vs. Carrie and was intended to directly compete with the successful and overtly supernatural A Nightmare on Elm Street Series – in fact The New Blood started out as the first attempt to face Jason off against Freddy Kreuger. This fell through though. It’s all as subtle as its director’s initials imply… (The director was John Carl Buechler - go figure).

Years after Tommy Jarvis seemingly defeated him and chained him underwater at Camp Crystal Lake, everyone’s favourite hockey-masked hulking killer Jason Voorhees returns to stalk and slash nubile teens when he's accidently released by a teenager with psychic powers…

The film does exhibit one moment of genuine creepiness and subtlety. After David and Robyn have had a wee bit of sex, he ventures downstairs to indulge in a midnight snack. As the power is out, he takes a torch. Moving through the darkened house – lit only by his torch and sporadic lightning – David enters the kitchen and fails to see the hulking brute standing stock still in the corner behind him (visable in top right-hand corner of fourth still below). Just standing there. Watching. Waiting. In the dark. We only see him briefly when lightning momentarily lights the entire room. This is one of the few instances in the series where we get a genuine hint of Jason’s sadistic and darkly calculating nature. There is something supremely creepy about him just standing there, so out of place in the cosy confines of this secluded holiday cabin home… With balloons.

I have a wicked soft spot for the seventh film, and it is one of my favorite of the series. It was a very cool idea to have Jason go up against a telekinetic girl, a formidable foe if you will. Still, I always wonder how a Freddy vs Jason movie would have played outback then.

Behind the Couch is a term used as a humorous metaphor to describe the actions that a state of fear may drive someone to: for example, a young child hiding 'behind the couch' when watching a scary film or TV show. Its use generally evokes a feeling of nostalgia: safe fear in a domestic setting.

In the case of this blog, it also denotes the reviewer hiding behind the couch in shame, due to the huge amount of trashy horror films he watches...

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'The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.'

H.P. Lovecraft

'Like one, that on a lonesome roadDoth walk in fear and dread,And having once turned round, walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.'

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

'A shudder through the silence creptAnd death athwart the noonlight swept…Graves closed round my path of life,The beautiful had fled;Pale shadows wandered by my side,And whispered of the dead.'

Sarah Helen Whitman

'We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.'

Stephen King

'Human beings are the only living creatures endowed with a full awareness of their own mortality.'

Alex Lickerman, Buddhist Physician

'A house is never still in darkness to those who listen intently; there is a whispering in distant chambers, an unearthly hand presses the snib of the window, the latch rises. Ghosts were created when the first man awoke in the night.'